An African Experience By Charles Tiayon charlestiayon@hotmail.com - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Training in Community Interpreting – An African Experience

By Charles Tiayon charlestiayon@hotmail.com Brussels, Belgium, 07 April 2017

Introductory Remarks

• A follow-up to the paper published in 2005 on

“Community Interpreting - An African Perspective”

• Questions:

– What are developments since then, at least in matters of practice and training? – Are developments conclusive or inconclusive?

• Focus: ASTI, University of Buea, Cameroon

Towards a Definition of Community Interpreting 1

• Traditionally, community interpreting or PSI is simply

defined as interpreting to ensure communication between a public service (hospital, court, police, etc.) and people who do not master the mainstream language

• Here, ‘community interpreting' is interpreting to facilitate

mutual understanding between speakers of the mainstream language (usually the official language) and those with limited proficiency in this language.

• Community practice is therefore carried out, as matter of

right, from and “into minority languages in order to ensure communication with all citizens and residents of a country and empower minority language users by giving them access to information and enabling them to participate in society” (my emphasis)

Towards a Definition of Community Interpreting 2

Preferred descriptors:

– community+social communication vs public service, – “language vs setting” (minority vs majority language,

• fficial vs non-official language community);

– both local and migrant communities, – a “human right” rather than a favour – overall focus on community wellbeing, effective social communication and individual empowerment)

Community Practice as a Relatively Old Practice but New Discipline

• an everyday practice across Africa (inc. courts,

hospitals, police, community radios and TVs, churches, civil status registries, movies, etc.) without prior training, and often associated with some amount of “community translation”

• offered as an elective course of 2-4 hours a week

in mainstream ASTI MA programmes since the 2007-2008 academic year

• reinforced as an elective course since 2013-2014

with the inception of PAUTRAIN MA programmes

Some Challenges of Training in Community interpreting

• the tendency to view community interpreting

with contempt; at best, as a lower type of practice/subject; at worst as nonexistent or useless

• an often wide variety of trainee languages in each

class, with an average of 6-8 students and 4-6 different languages per year

• a questionable mastery of language by interested

trainees

• scarcity/lack of reference material and

unavailability of resource persons

Approach to Community interpreting Teaching/Learning

• Community interpreting exclusively as an elective course to small

groups of students who were initially admitted to study in the School’s major language combinations

• Trainees must have a reasonable mastery of speaking (and writing)

in their chosen language

• Trainees must all have at least one of the teacher’s languages in

common; method/process-centred rather than single-language focussed, student-centred and self-discovery approach to interpreting learning, with teacher simply used for scaffolding purposes

• Peer assessment encouraged, especially so where two or more

students share the same language

• External examiner assessment in collaboration with course tutor
• Training through MA student research supervision

Prospects of training in community interpreting

• with each of 2500 African languages in mind and a shift

from language diversity as a disadvantage to language diversity as cultural wealth, community interpreting is a real investment opportunity both for trainees and training institutions

• encouraging both monolanguage and multilanguage

groups of trainees

• offering community interpreting as an elective course in

programmes which focus exclusively on combinations of majority/dominant languages at master’s level

• offering community interpreting too as a fully-fledged

certificate programme to already-trained professional interpreters or qualified linguists with requisite knowledge in the relevant minority endogenous African languages

Concluding Remarks: Advantages of Training in Community interpreting

• a major support to quality communication and

inclusive (interpreter) education in both endogenous and exogenous languages in Africa (including interpreting from/into sign language and Braille)

• multilanguage (vs monolanguage) contributions of the

community interpreting class are unique opportunities to explore novel ways for observing interpreting as a process over and beyond specific languages

• contribution to quality intercultural communication

between users of exogenous languages and those of endogenous languages of Africa

Select Bibliography (Reverse Chronological Order)

• Pedregosa, Inma 2017. A Review of Taibi, Mustapha and Ozolins, Uldis
• 2016. Community Translation. London, New York: Bloomsbury Academic,

Bloomsbury Advances in interpreting Series. In Specialised Translation, Issue 27

• Taibi, Mustapha and Ozolins, Uldis 2016. Community Translation. London,

New York: Bloomsbury Academic, Bloomsbury Advances in interpreting Series

• Tiayon, Charles 2005. Community Interpreting: An African Perspective. In

Hermeneus, Revista de Traducción e Interpretación. No. 7

• Tiayon, Charles 2009. A Case for Community Translational Communication

from / into African Languages: Some Macro-Level Organisational and Management Concerns. In Chia, Emmanuel, Joseph C, Suh and Alexandre Ndeffo Tene (Eds) Perspectives on Translation and Interpretation in Cameroon, Bamenda: African Books Collective

• Tiayon, Charles 1990. Exploration in the Organisation and Management of

Tramslational Communication. Unpublished Master’s Dissertation, ELR: University of Birmingham

Jërëjëf ! Asante! Thank you! Merci ! Obrigado! !Gracias!